He almost hadn’t. He’d waited a few minutes in the downpour to see the lightning that always came with thunder—he thought those brilliant gold lines cracking across the waves might look like God on a bender. But there wasn’t any lightning, and he didn’t know why. He’d asked around, but no one could tell him. What did Northwesterners know about weather? Practically nothing, unless they were the sort who sailed. And the old mariners told him there hadn’t been any thunder at all—they said he’d only imagined it.

But Harry’d heard it, too, and so did a bunch of other people. Rector might make things up and hear or see things once in a while, but he wasn’t wrong about the thunder.

He untied a corner of his blanket pouch and shoved his hand down inside it, withdrawing a box of matches and the burlap pouch. Then he reached for the packet Harry had handed him on the way out the door, his birthday present. He deserved this one, and deserved it richly.

But when he unfolded the little package, he found only another folded piece of paper stuffed inside it. The paper was blank and empty.

“Goddammit, Harry! Some lousy goddamn birthday present from you. Goddammit! I thought we were friends, you old horse’s ass!” He shouted louder than someone who wished to remain inconspicuous ought to, but it was dark and he was mad. He crushed the waxed paper and the blank paper up into a ball and chucked it toward the ocean.

If it hit the waves or just made it to the beach, he didn’t know. He didn’t hear it land.

“All that talk about doing me a favor,” he growled. “Maybe I could do him the favor of burning down that stupid shack. Save him the trouble of deciding where to go, yeah. How would he like that favor?”

Shaking now with rage as well as the symptoms of withdrawal, he retrieved the last dregs of his personal stash from his jacket pocket. With quivering hands he tapped the bottom edge against his palm to settle the contents, and he assembled his tools.

The pouch held scraps of tinfoil, a tiny teaspoon, a wooden napkin ring, and a broken glass pipe. He wouldn’t need the spoon; there wasn’t enough sap left to measure. He left the glass pipe’s bowl wrapped in the old handkerchief he’d found someplace, since he couldn’t use it and he didn’t want to cut himself.

He extracted a square of foil and held it firmly between his fingers, suddenly second-guessing his decision to do this out on the beach. But the wind wasn’t strong; if anything, it was almost curiously absent. The birds were still sleeping, the world was still dark, and no one was watching.